The following excerpt is taken directly from one of my personal friends and respected engineers – George Runkle. He owns Runkle Consulting and specializes in Foundation Repair Investigations.
Having been in this business for a number of years now, I’ve seen a lot of shady operators in the foundation repair business. I hope this post will help keep you from getting ripped off with a foundation repair.
Foundation Repair Contractors:
1. Overselling: The most common rip off may not be totally intentional. A lot of these guys use commissioned salesmen, and before selling foundation repairs the guy may have been selling stereos. Also, the commission is dependent on how much is sold, so even if the salesman wants to be honest, there is a subconscious desire to make more money, especially if times are tough. So, you may have 4 piers recommended where 3 will do.
Of course it can get worse. One I went to the homeowner had a proposal for $19,000 worth of piers around his garage. The upstairs had a lot of movement and cracking, so he was told the entire foundation around the garage needed to be supported. I came out and examined it, and something didn’t look right. It turns out the floor over the garage wasn’t supported right, the foundations were fine. The homeowner needed a beam in the garage and a couple of columns. Cost? About $6,000. Not only would the homeowner pay an obscene amount of money, it wouldn’t have fixed the problem.
2. Home Made Piers: Foundation repair piers are nationally manufactured by companies such as A.B. Chance, Maclean-Dixie, Grip-Tite and so on. They have strict quality control standards, spend a lot on research and development, and do a lot of testing. So, they aren’t cheap. So, quite a number of operators out there go out and buy used drill pipe and weld steel flights to them and call them “helical piers”. They undercut their competition, but their product is questionable.
Imagine, you have a foundation failure, and you get a couple of quotes. One is a couple thousand dollars below the rest, and you give it to that contractor. He uses the piers he made in the parking lot behind his shop, and puts them in the ground. The welds fail, and your building fails again. No problem, he gave you a 50 year warranty. Well, not exactly…
3. Worthless Warranties: When a contractor warranties his work for 50 years, he may as well warranty it for 10,000 years. That warranty is from his company, not some everlasting entity. For that warranty to work, he has to be in business and solvent when your foundation fails. So, if a company that belongs to a 55 year old man gives you a 50 year warranty you have to assume one of the following:
a. He will be working past 105.
b. His business will be taken over by his children and they will still be doing foundation repairs 50 years from now.
c. Somebody will buy his business and not change the name and they will honor his warranties.
None of the above will happen. Generally, any warranty you get is probably only really good for 10 years or so, and that is OK. The failure of the piers will happen probably within the first year or two. So, if someone is offering you a quote with a high price but is giving you an “Extra Special Warranty” don’t buy it. Also, don’t be suckered into home made piers with an extra long warranty either – it isn’t worth anything.
4. Incompetence: I’ve seen this a few times. It seems like in every business there are people who get up one day and think “I think I’ll be a…(restaurant owner, home improvement contractor, home inspector…). Sometimes you get people who think foundation repair is something they can do. Hire people with experience, and get references. There is no excuse for not checking someone out – you can find them on Google and Angie’s List.
I hope this helps you in finding a good foundation repair contractor. Feel free to comment, I’ll be happy to answer any reasonable questions.
To read this post from George’s website – click here.